Senator Harry Reid Caves: PIPA Postponed

http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/20/senator-harry-reid-caves-pipa-postponed/

by llambda • 15 years ago

144 26 15 years ago

techcrunch.com

JumpCrisscross• 15 years ago

"Postponed". Lovely.

spodek• 15 years ago

If only postponed meant for the life of the author plus seventy years.

simonsarris• 15 years ago

Postponed is awfully vague. The senator's two tweets immediately after that one are more telling:

> There's no reason that legitimate issues raised about PROTECT IP can't be resolved. Counterfeiting & piracy cost 1000s of #jobs yearly #pipa

> Americans rightfully expect to be fairly compensated 4 their work. I'm optimistic that we can reach compromise on PROTECT IP in coming weeks

He has not had a crisis of conscience. Just a crisis of wording.

llambda• 15 years ago

> Postponed is awfully vague.

Right. Even if these bills are tabled indefinitely, to be clear, the government will continue to pursue legislation that seeks to control "piracy" (i.e. beyond DMCA) as the perception currently is it's out of control.

Once these bills are defeated, those who oppose them need to go on the offensive and start educating Congress; lobbying isn't pretty but those who rally around Google et. al ought to start a counteroffensive in the form of a lobby as soon as possible to make a clear case for their cause and help Congress realize why these bills are so flawed.

nextparadigms2• 15 years ago

For starters, how about they separate "counterfeiting" from "online piracy". The only reason they added them together is because they know people would be more inclined to agree with counterfeiting laws, so they hope the anti-piracy stuff passes under that counterfeiting umbrella.

Also this feels like bad news rather than good news. The only reason they would post-pone it is if they thought it wouldn't pass, and then the bill would be killed forever. So in that case, I think I would've rather had the voting go on.

sounds• 15 years ago

To be sure, they'll try using the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window to pass something with a similar effect.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." - Thomas Jefferson

thetrendycyborg• 15 years ago

"1000s of jobs"? "1000s". The tech sector employs way more than thousands! Really, if this is about jobs, let's do some simple math. I'm willing to lose thousands of jobs for many more jobs in a different industry with a much brighter future.

nextparadigms2• 15 years ago

I think it's long over due for someone to give us the real numbers and debunk MPAA's hyperinflated claims of job and revenue loss due to copyright infringement.

iamandrus• 15 years ago

I became critical when he said issues with the bill "[can] be resolved." No, no they can't.

These bills (SOPA and PIPA) are broken and are unfixable. The only way to "fix" them is to scrap them and rewrite them.

He also implies that PIPA will generate jobs in the industries most troubled by piracy, and again I have to disagree. The problem is with these companies pushing outdated, annoying business models instead of embracing the hundreds of amazing startups trying to fix the problems these companies have. Jobs won't be created by passing these bills. That's just the sugarcoating that the lobbyists use to make the bills look feasible to the Senate.

And I agree fully, creators deserve compensation for their work. As an entrepeneur, I know the feeling of getting something in return for creating. But these bills will open Pandora's box and unleash all hell on the Internet and American citizens. No more fixing. Kill these bills once and for all.

psychotik• 15 years ago

That's the problem - it's disheartening to not see any congress person stand up and admit that they were wrong in the initial bipartisan support that this bill had. Reacting is one thing, understand what caused the internet to revolt is another.

I was hoping this would cause some of the more sincere members of congress to admit that they pass legislation prepared by special interest groups without due diligence. Maybe I'm just too optimistic, but all reaction so far appears to be crowd-pleasing more than sincere.

alexqgb2• 15 years ago

"The problem is with these companies pushing outdated, annoying business models instead of embracing the hundreds of amazing startups trying to fix the problems these companies have."

It's worse than that, in that the business models aren't the only thing that's outdated. The real problem is that the law itself - to which those models are inextricably linked - is what has really become archaic.

After all, copyright spent 300 years evolving under a paradigm in which the ability to copy and distribute, and to make derivations from media were all highly concentrated in capital intensive operations to which few - if any - independent citizens had direct access. In that regard, publishing operations were like Boeing 747s. And these core assumptions are reflected throughout the law.

Today, the paradigm has inverted. Like the Earth becoming unmoored and starting to revolve around the now-fixed sun, the emergence of low-cost, highly distributed general computing has inverted the once-dominant conception. And like the view of an unmoving Earth at the center of the cosmos, the entire conception of copying as a strictly limited right has become unsustainable.

Now it's the law itself that needs to change. The assumptions that are based on the idea that people don't have secure networked computers need to be removed, root and branch. Obviously, business models that depend on the old paradigm will not get "fixed". Rather, they will die. In this sense, the copyright protected industries actually have a clearer understanding of technology than they're usually given credit for. The hundreds (indeed, thousands) of startups wanting to move into the space they occupy are like a teeming horde of army ants. Left unexposed, the cartels would be swiftly consumed. The only 'solution' is to double down on the now-archaic law and maintain what they can while hoping the plutocracy advances far enough to snuff out democratic process entirely.

Though the timber may be rotten, it still props up the roof of the only shelter they have. And that's why they will do literally anything to protect it.

And while there are many many startups, they, too, have a problem in that the absence of reality-based law will ultimately hurt their prospects as well. Like the rest of us, they're operating an an Interregnum - the period between kings - one defined by a collapse that hinders the emergence of its replacement. The old is dying, but won't permit the new to be born.

My own thought is that real reform would mean realizing that we cannot police people's lives well enough to enforce copyright at the individual level. Instead, we need to look at the corporate entity - an entirely non-human construct - when trying to locate the box-office of the future.

This would mean adapting copyright law so that only incorporated entities could be subject to its penalties. Individuals can do what they like. But once they do anything with enough financial scale to merit incorporation, they need to submit those organizations to the traditional rules governing duplication, distribution, and derivation.

This would prevent Universal Pictures from making a copy of Harry Potter and screwing Warner Bros. out of the proceeds from unlicensed public exhibition. And it would keep Warner Bros. from making movies from J.K. Rowling's books without dealing with her directly. It would also prevent operator-controlled commercial services (like Netflix and iTunes) from distributing unauthorized copies of HP. But it would not prevent people from sharing files among themselves, or allow user-controlled exchanges to be liable for their activity. Keep the DMCA takedown as a compromise, acknowledging the corporate nature of neutral intermediaries, and make systems like YouTube's ContentID the norm. But go no further.

Admittedly, this is a massive change. And it may not provide for the future of the existing cartels. But that's not the point. The point is having law that is clear, constitutional, and aligned with reality. The rest of the chips must fall where they may. With that in place, new and lasting business models can finally emerge in peace.

CWuestefeld• 15 years ago

He also implies that PIPA will generate jobs in the industries most troubled by piracy

Even assuming arguendo that it would, it won't be a net win. Today, the pirates are spending money on other things; it's not like they're just burning the money that they would have spent on Content. So any money that begins to flow into the Content industry would necessarily come at the expense of some other industry.

There's no net gain, other than what's probably a tiny bit from alleviating the allocation inefficiency.

georgieporgie• 15 years ago

Counterfeiting & piracy cost 1000s of #jobs yearly #pipa

If he wants to protect or create jobs, he should introduce a bill banning the use of computer graphics. Then we can all go back to the 1980s when thousands of low-skill people were employed to organize and manipulate sets and tiny models.

sigzero• 15 years ago

A crisis of what? You give Reid too much credit.

Iv• 15 years ago

Postponed is not enough.

namidark• 15 years ago

Postponed until the media coverage dies down and they can pass it when no one is paying attention as an amendment to another bill

josefresco• 15 years ago

Reid's official statement on his .gov website (http://democrats.senate.gov/2012/01/20/reid-statement-on-int...) said the movie industry alone 'supports' 2.2 million Americans. A claim Maddox humorously pointed out was clearly wrong even if you factor in the "related" jobs like food service: http://maddox.xmission.com/

lonnierenda• 15 years ago

I agree with the general theme of the comments. "Postponed" sounds more like "regrouping" to me.

lallysingh• 15 years ago

It also gives them time to squeeze more money out of the relevant lobbying groups.

dugmartin• 15 years ago

I have a feeling it will be postponed until the "2012 Omnibus Save the Children & Support the Troops" bill is up for a vote and it is added as a rider to the section dealing with funding terrorist groups. Probably right before the November elections.

joejohnson• 15 years ago

>> Both bills have now been tabled. Hearings on the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA)...

Hahaha. I think it should read Stop Online Piracy Act.

Vivtek• 15 years ago

"So we can find a better solution."

Yeah. Make Hollywood run a real business without jackbooted support, that would be a better solution.

You know what happened here? For a couple of hours on Wednesday, a whole bunch of Americans realized that politics might actually affect their lives - and Congress felt the icy knife of knowledge of how close they came to utter destruction of their gravy train. Because if that American beast ever actually wakes up, times are going to get interesting.

Senator Harry Reid Caves: PIPA Postponed

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